Want to listen to an episode?

• You can download an app, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast from CMLE” hit subscribe, and all episodes will appear on your phone – it’s so easy!
  • Apps we like include Pocket Casts, iTunes, and Stitcher.
  • Download any of these, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast” and hit Subscribe.
  • If it is not readily available, just enter this RSS feed: http://booksandbeverages.blubrry.net/feed/podcast/.
• Or, you can stream an episode right now on your computer by going to our streaming page, by clicking here.

Check out our full information page for all the beverage pictures and recipes, as well as all the authors and books!

Introduction

Welcome, everyone, to Books and Beverages! This week we are discussing Thrillers!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we support all types of libraries. This is our book group podcast, where we discuss different genres of books each week, while we all sit in our comfy chairs and drink our beverages. And you are, of course, an important part of this book group. So if you do not already have a nice beverage please go get one, so you can join the experience.

There are no “right” or “wrong” books to read and chat about for our book group – we are just here to explore all kinds of books. We love books, and want to talk about them – and we want you to share what you are reading. All of us will take away at least a title or two that we want to read at the end of our time together!

Who is joining our reading group this week? This week our guest host is Kelly Groth from St Cloud Public Library.

Genre Suggestions

This is another very broad category of potential reading material – so you have a ton of books to consider here. Yes, your reading lists can be filled for years just trying to sample it all! Here are a few different kinds of books that could be considered thrillers:

• Mystery
• Legal thriller
• Medical thriller
• Political thriller
• Spy fiction
• Psychological thriller
• Techno-thriller

This is a genre that gets made into all kinds of popular movies or TV shows; so if you like pop culture material, and cross-format content – this is a good place to start! And this genre really overlaps well with many other genres, including horror (check back to our episode 103 from last week).

There are a lot of authors who are very popular in the thriller genre. If you want to explore, you can start with some of these bestselling authors, and see if you like their different series!

Some Reading Resources

• Books tagged Thriller on Goodreads
• 41 Of The Most Suspenseful Books You’ll Ever Read
• Amazon list (updated hourly) Most Popular Authors in Thrillers & Suspense
• 22 Thrillers Coming in Summer 2017
• 15 Psychological Thriller Books That Mess with Your Head
• Kirkus Thrillers Book Reviews
• 10 Of The Best Thrillers To Read On The Beach That Will Leave You With Book-Shaped Tan Lines (And You Won’t Even Mind)
• NPR’s list of top 100 Thrillers
• The Best Thriller Writers—Ever

READY TO WIN?

We will picking a random commenter to win the scariest  puppet we’ve ever seen! Her name-tag says she’s Sven’s Grandma, but clearly in some terrifying dimension! It will be perfect for some puppet fan, or for a collection of puppets in a library. (A scary library!)

This week we are sitting in a pretty dimly lit room room, with monsters covering our walls, orange lights, and jack lanterns all over the place. We are ready to enjoy some good thrills and chills – so we are glad you are here with us. If you feel someone grab your hand, that’s probably just us being scared. Probably.

Check out our full information page here, with links to all our books, podcasts, and creepypasta discussed – along with pictures and recipes for this episode’s beverages!

You can find all kinds of horror stories out there. Some of them are on the front pages of newspapers, but we want to talk about the fictional kind of horror this week. True crime has been a popular genre (Helter Skelter is a good one; Stranger Beside Me started Ann Rule’s career) – scary, but too scary to discuss today

These books are the ones that you might not be able to stop reading at bedtime – but you spend the rest of the night hearing every weird knock and rattle. Was that an eerie footstep? Tell yourself it probably wasn’t, and let’s talk about scary books!

One thing I find about horror books, as I review my favorites, is that they are really dependent on the situation I’m in while I’m reading them. Some books seemed extra scary because I was in the right place, or situation, or frame of mind. So not everything we discuss here is strictly “horror” books – but as with all of our genres and chats, it’s what you think it is. So if a book was scary to you, or has the potential to be scary: that’s horror.

There can be horror elements to all kinds of books, including mystery, literary fiction, and Western.

Want to listen to an episode?

• You can download an app, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast from CMLE” hit subscribe, and all episodes will appear on your phone – it’s so easy!
  • Apps we like include Pocket Casts, iTunes, and Stitcher.
  • Download any of these, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast” and hit Subscribe.
  • If it is not readily available, just enter this RSS feed: http://booksandbeverages.blubrry.net/feed/podcast/.
• Or, you can stream an episode right now on your computer by going to our streaming page, by clicking here.

Ready to win?? Leave a comment below; one person will be randomly chosen. You can win a copy of The Cocktail Guide to the Galaxy: A Universe of Unique Cocktails from the Celebrated Doctor Who Bar, by Andy Heidel! “For the first time ever comes a book that unites two of the best things in the world: nerd culture, and booze. Because if anything is true, it’s that nerds are awesome, and many of us like to throw back an adult beverage or two while re-watching Firefly for the seventeenth time.”

Bonus announcement: If you are in the St. Cloud or Collegeville, MN area on November 7 at 7pm – you could meet award-winning author John Scalzi! He be at the Pellegrene Auditorium to talk about what science fiction can teach us about the role of technology in human experience. A book signing will follow the talk. (Mary will definitely be attending, as she adores Scalzi’s books; you can contact us if you want to meet up!)

Want to listen to an episode?

• You can download an app, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast from CMLE” hit subscribe, and all episodes will appear on your phone – it’s so easy!
  • Apps we like include Pocket Casts, iTunes, and Stitcher.
  • Download any of these, search for “Books and Beverages Podcast” and hit Subscribe.
  • If it is not readily available, just enter this RSS feed: http://booksandbeverages.blubrry.net/feed/podcast/.
• Or, you can stream an episode right now on your computer by going to our streaming page, by clicking here.

Welcome, everyone, to Books and Beverages! This is our book group podcast, where we discuss different genres of books each week, while we sit in our comfy chairs and drink our beverages. And you are, of course, an important part of this book group. So if you do not already have a nice beverage please go get one, so you can join the experience of our book group.

Who is joining us this week? Our regular hosts Angie and Mary are here. This week our guest host is Kathy Parker, director of libraries at St. John’s and St. Ben’s.